Barnyard

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Review: Talks down to children.

By Shawn Adler

The funniest thing about Barnyard: The Original Party Animals, the new computer-animated film from Steve Oedekerk and Nickelodeon, isn't in the film at all. No, the funniest thing about Barnyard is the Internet uproar over the fact that the main characters, two cows named Otis (voiced by Kevin James) and Ben (Sam Elliott), have udders. And they're male (male cows, of course, don't have, ummm, milking equipment).

There are literally thousands of posts arguing this point over at the IMDB.com message boards, where defenders of the film have had to take the awesome and hilarious and awesomely hilarious stance that, "Hey, at least they're not showing penises." At bottom, the posters all seem to agree that somewhere the filmmakers made a terrible mistake and, as a result, the audience should be terribly insulted.

Wait until they actually see the movie.

The fact that the male cows all sport udders is one of the least insulting aspects of Barnyard, a film that lacks memorable characters, repeats the moral ("A strong man stands up for himself. A stronger man stands up for others.") as dialogue five or six times, displays poor artistic and technical craftsmanship, substitutes inexplicable behavioral change for character growth, and uses a Tom Petty song as a battle anthem. Twice.

The story, such as it is, takes place on a farm run by a vegan MacDonald and populated by a cadre of walking, talking animals, who think and act just like humans do but only when humans aren't around to witness it. You would think, somewhat rightly, that if you were a cow and you could walk on two legs, drive a car, express emotions through speech, and had foreknowledge of your own death, you would want to let every human know (the better to not eat you with, my dear), but the animals here are happy enough to use their skills to play practical jokes when nobody is looking.

Ben, the bovine leader of the farm, at least discourages this sort of tomfoolery, but remains powerless to stop his son Otis from engaging in risky behavior. Which is too bad, really, since it's tomfoolery which leaves Ben by himself when coyotes come to ravage the chicken coop. With Ben the victim of bovine-icide, the other farm animals elect Otis as their new leader. It's up to him to save the farm, protect their secret, and, of course, learn valuable life lessons along the way.

Click for more images from Barnyard.

There is some speculation that Barnyard is going to become a regular TV series a la Jimmy Neutron, Oedekerk's previous scripted foray into computer animation. Barnyard, with its lackluster animation, seems tailor-made for the small screen, where viewers aren't as discriminating when it comes to the quality of effort. If this is indeed true, it seems likely Barnyard was conceived as a 90 minute commercial from the start, since nothing about the film aspires to anything more than sitcom quality. That is a shame.

In recent years there has been a huge upswing in the number of animated films to hit theaters, as computer animation becomes cheaper and ancillary markets (toys, DVDs, foreign gross) become more profitable. The best of the recent lot, like Finding Nemo, are the best for the same reason that some family films have always been better than others &#Array; they are smart, perceptive, and imaginative. They don't talk down to children, but rather include children in on the joke. In other words, and to borrow a metaphor from one of the best family films of all-time, there's a difference between seeing the wizard and seeing the man, between watching a fire and light show and actually pulling back the curtain. Barnyard doesn't understand this. It talks down to children by repetition, and insults them with characters that change at the whims of the screenwriter, instead of through actual growth.

Barnyard also contains the most sanitized death in recent memory, where a cow is slaughtered by coyotes but neither a) bleeds or b) actually gets cut. Except for the fact that he just got bitten repeatedly by dangerous canines, it would seem ol' Ben died from a broken heart. It's part of the children's handbook, of course, that parents must die in the opening act so little Nemo/Simba/Harry Potter/Otis can face life's dangers, save the day, and learn valuable lessons on their own. It can, has been, and will be done again to spectacular effect. But only when it's treated with the seriousness life and death deserve. Barnyard, by sanitizing death, makes it less important, and therefore of less consequence for the main character. Children demand emotional honesty, and Barnyard doesn't deliver.